Apprized of the operations of the Saxon general, he hastened after him, attacked, and defeated him in a bloody and obstinate battle. About twenty-seven years afterwards, he again delivered Bath from the assaults of these ferocious invaders, by defeating a powerful army, on which occasion he is said to have slain four hundred and forty men with his own hand. John de Villula, a native of Tours, purchased the demesne of Rufus, in 1090, for five hundred marks, and obtained permission to remove the Pontifical seat from Wells thither; he rebuilt the monastery and church, restored the public and private edifices, and thus became the founder of a new city, on the ruins of the old one. Henry I. confirmed and extended the privileges which his predecessor had granted, by adding the hidage of the city; and, in 1106, Villula, then Bishop of Bath, conferred the whole on the monastery of St. Peter. Henry paid a visit to Bath in the Easter of 1107. The city remained in the possession of the bishops until 1193, when Savaric gave it to Richard I., in exchange for the rich Abbey of Glastonbury. The prior, however, continued to hold the city under an annual rent of thirty pounds, exclusive of the levies which were made by the king on extraordinary emergencies. One of these occurred in the forty-seventh year of Edward III., to the amount of L13. 6s. 8d., a sum which conveys the idea of the inferiority of Bath, in point of population, to Bristol, which paid seven times as much. Four years after that period, the number of lay inhabitants in the city, above the age of fourteen, amounted to 570, and that of the clerics, in the archdeaconry, to 201. In this and succeeding reigns the property of the monastery was greatly augmented; and the monks of Bath are said to have cultivated the manufacture of cloth to such an extent as to render it one of the principal cities in the west of England for that branch of trade. This city sent Members to Parliament as early as 1297. Queen Elizabeth, in 1590, granted a charter, which declared Bath to be a city of itself, and constituted a certain number of the citizens as a corporation, by "the name of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of the City of Bath." In the reign of James II. the corporation shut the gates against the Duke of Monmouth, when he summoned them, and apprehended the few adherents to his cause that remained within their walls. Six of these unfortunate persons afterwards fell victims to the vindictive cruelty of Jefferies. The Jacobite principles prevailed at Bath long after the revolution; and Carte, the historian, is said to have headed a party in favour of the pretender, during the rebellion of 1715. Being discovered, he leaped out of a window in his canonicals, and fled. The city is nearly surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills of considerable height. This range of hills opens to allow a course for the Avon, which winds around it, receiving numerous articles of merchandize, from hence conveyed in barges to Bristol.